Sluice
by ncfan
Summary: -Sasori, Shizune- And the sluices of Sunagakure ran red with blood. AU.


**Characters**: Sasori, Shizune, Karura, Yashamaru, Chiyo, Tsunade, Kabuto, Konan**  
Summary**: And the sluices of Sunagakure ran red with blood.**  
Pairings**: onesided Sasori x Karura; others are strictly implied**  
Author's Note**: Be aware, this contains some fairly graphic descriptions of gore and, to a lesser extent, violence; I don't like to glorify war. It was rated T for a reason. And if Shizune seems at all OOC, she isn't; I can't help but think she would develop a different personality, being raised by Sasori instead of Tsunade. Final note: you'd have to read some of my other works to understand exactly what's going on between Sasori and Karura throughout. If you lot are raising eyebrows about anything that goes on in this oneshot, then I will have done my job well.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

It was on a whim that he took her, purely a whim.

Out of all of the young nin sent to infiltrate Konohagakure during the Third War, fourteen-year-old Sasori had succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of his superiors, to the point that he completely melted into the background of Konoha. No one even suspected that this boy, with an odd appearance for a Konoha villager, was a spy; he'd been smart enough not to smudge his eyes with kohl the way he would have in Sunagakure.

The girl was left alone, to herself. She was no older than four, possibly even younger than that, a pale child, with a head of dark hair with ragged ends.

It was purely whim; Sasori supposes if he had been more merciful he would have killed her on that night-darkened park bench, if she was alone. Better to die than to grow up in a village at war; he knew this himself, and maybe that was why he didn't draw a kunai and just slit her throat.

He didn't kill her. Instead, he just sat down beside her, and for a few moments, they watched the paper boats float by on the river, illuminated by the golden light of the lamps overhead.

After a moment, Sasori began to talk to her, just to clear up a few things.

There was no one to look after her, no one. So he was right.

Good. That would mean there would be no one to miss her, or look for her after she was gone.

He took only a second to learn the girl's name before hitting her with the jutsu that would wipe her memory clean—Sasori had wanted to know it for a purely trivial purpose. The jutsu struck upon her would make her past life to this point as though it had never been—it wasn't that the memories were sealed away, but simply that they weren't there anymore. They'd been effaced from her mind.

The little girl in gray slumped against his chest and Sasori soundlessly wrapped her in his arms before standing up and walking away. He was supposed to report back to Suna within the week, anyway.

As he walked off, towards the South gate—no one would ever see the teenager and the unconscious toddler escaping through the darkened gates—Sasori wondered if he should give the child a new name.

Then he decided not to. Shizune could keep her name. She'd have a different life soon enough, anyway.

-0-

Sasori arrived back at Sunagakure in four days—he would have returned sooner, if not for Shizune's admittedly slight weight weighing him down as he ghosted across dunes—in the midday heat, shouting hoarsely with a cracked throat for the guards to let him in—it was wartime, after all, and the village gates couldn't be opened for just anyone. His team was waiting for him on the other side.

Karura and Yashamaru both registered shock at the sight of the child wrapped in brown cloth to protect her skin in Sasori's arms, demanding somewhat tremulously to be put down now that they had come to the village. Karura's green eyes scorched Sasori's flesh and he looked away. The two siblings, however, said nothing to him and Yashamaru smiled absently down at Shizune, still trying to fathom what was happening. Shizune, for her part, smiled shyly back but latched one hand around Sasori's pant leg, wary of literally everyone around her but him.

Chiyo, on the other hand, fixed a sharp gaze on her grandson and bore the air that let him know that she would not allow him to get out of giving her an explanation for this.

"Who is she?"

Sasori sighed. Though he now lived in his own apartment in Suna, this conversation was being held in Chiyo's house, in her bedroom with the door shut and locked. Chiyo was pulling off her shoes and dumping the sand in them out the window.

"The girl? Her name is Shizune. I found her on the way back, in a town in Kawa no Kuni that the Leaf had decimated," Sasori lied effortlessly, having gone over this story before and being thankful that Shizune hadn't woken up from the erasure jutsu until they had crossed over into Kawa no Kuni.

Dark brown eyes stared piercingly into him. Chiyo now sat on the edge of her bed, Sasori standing near the door with his arms behind her back. "And what of the girl's family? I sincerely hope you didn't kidnap this girl from her bed, Sasori-chan."

Sasori felt his mouth sour, and not just because she was still calling him "–chan". "Would I do that, Baachan?"

Chiyo's silence indicated that she, at least, thought that he would, and Sasori sighed long-sufferingly.

"No, I did _not_ kidnap her. She was alone, in the streets. She had no memory, and there was no one there to care for her." That, at least, was the truth, though Sasori felt no need to inform Chiyo or anyone else that he'd obliterated all of Shizune's memories.

The old woman nodded, starting to be convinced by her grandson's story though Sasori could tell she wasn't buying it totally. "Why did you take the girl here, Sasori-chan? You're not the sort to take in strays."

No, he wasn't, and in retrospect Sasori wasn't sure why he had taken Shizune that night. "I don't know," he admitted, staring out the window; hot afternoon light still poured in, though it seemed dark inside the room with its dull red hangings and bed coverings.

"What will you do with her?"

He shrugged. "Start training her, I suppose, in a year or so—I was no older when you began training me in puppetry—if her chakra control's good enough for puppetry and she has the chakra capacity for a shinobi's lifestyle at all. Any warm body is an asset to this village."

"Alright, that sounds reasonable. I'll test her chakra reserves tomorrow, if that's alright?"

"Of course."

As Sasori was leaving, Chiyo called from the bed, narrowing her eyes at him. "One last thing, Sasori-chan. Did the girl tell you her name? Or did you give it to her?"

It was one last trap; Sasori could spy it out immediately, and almost told her that he expected better from such a skilled puppet mistress. "I gave Shizune her name," Sasori lied again, and left quickly after that.

-0-

The blazing sun poured radiant, sweltering heat down on the dunes that left even the Sand nin panting and sweaty. After the battle that left seven Leaf nin dead and three more taken captive, Sasori leaned against a rock and loosened the collar of his shirt, gasping slightly. "God, the heat's infernal today."

From her sitting position on the ground (positioned carefully so no bare skin would touch the burning sand) wiping kunai stolen from the Leaf nin—the iron and steel they employed was of a higher grade than anything found in Kaze no Kuni—Karura nodded. "I can't remember the last time it was so hot in September," the older girl agreed.

"How can you tell the difference?" a captive, hands bound behind him, disarmed and chakra sealed, made to kneel on his knees in the sand, snapped bitterly.

Karura's head swiveled around towards him. "I don't suppose nin from a soft village are used to being uncomfortable," she retorted with a smile, dark green eyes glittering with a special sort of malice for her vanquished enemy.

"Slut!"

At this, Sasori turned especially cold eyes on the Sand nin standing watch over the three captives from the Leaf village. "Do we take prisoners?" he asked ominously.

All three of the Leaf shinobi, with their sun-burnt faces paled noticeably, the latter two glaring at their unruly comrade.

The warden nodded. "We do when they have information we need." His dark eyes grew keen as they flicked from Karura to the captive who had insulted her. "Believe me, even if the man didn't possess information we had a need for, he would pay dearly for his loose tongue today. They'll all talk, one way or another." The only woman among the captives whimpered and the warden, irritated, belted her hard across the back of the head with the flat end of his sword. "Shut up!" Her comrades' protests were ignored, and she slumped in the sand, hair glittering with blood that spilled on the sand.

Karura smiled coolly, voice laden down with poisonous honey in her words. "That's quite alright, gentlemen." Eyes fell on the one she'd had words with, who glared sullenly at her. "What I've discovered is that when a man calls a woman a slut, he does so because he feels _inadequate_ in some way."

The man's face flushed scarlet with rage, but under the piercing stares of Sasori and the warden, he knew better than to respond.

When Sasori noted a medic and two ANBU stepping forward, preparing to dispose of the bodies of the dead, he called over to them. "If you don't mind, I'd like the corpses."

Karura wrinkled her nose. "What for?"

Sasori didn't answer her, as he leaned over the corpse of a young Leaf nin not much older than him, and felt at as a gash on his throat.

These bodies would do nicely.

-0-

"I don't believe it," Chiyo sighed, exasperated, and Shizune, sitting on the tile floor, quailed.

"It's not my fault, Chiyo-sama!" the small girl squeaked, alarmed, and Chiyo leaned down—not that she had to lean far—and patted the girl's head gently.

"I didn't say it was, child." They were in Chiyo's large apartment, light pouring into the kitchen—Sasori and Chiyo sat down at the kitchen table while Shizune was shooed into the living room.

Once the girl was gone, Chiyo held up the bit of chakra paper, and Sasori raised an eyebrow. "She's a Water type!" Chiyo groaned, slamming the soggy chakra paper down on the table.

Water ninjutsu was of little to no use in Kaze no Kuni, since all water ninjutsu was utilized by removing water from the earth or the air, and that wasn't really particularly easy to do in the desert. Sasori sighed. "Baachan, do we even _know_ any water jutsu masters in Suna?"

"Only a few, and their services don't come cheaply; it's really not worth it since Shizune-chan won't even be able to use strong water jutsus in this climate. The only ones she could use were the water jutsus that manipulate the water in the human body, and I'm not sure there's enough money in Suna to get a master to teach her those."

Sasori tapped the ends of long fingers against the table moodily. "So teaching her elemental ninjutsu is out, until she's older at least—Earth, maybe." Out of all the elements, Earth was the easiest for those who didn't have a natural affinity to it to master. "How did you say her chakra control was?"

"Very fine for a child her age; it will become more so as she grows, if she's properly trained." Chiyo stood to get a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with milk. "She should be a good student in puppetry; she's shown interest in it."

"Good, good," Sasori nodded absently, staring into space. Then, reddish eyes fell on his grandmother. "I sense a 'but'."

Chiyo hesitated only momentarily before launching in. "I'd like to take her on as a medical apprentice too, if you don't mind. She'd be a good fit."

Sasori waved a hand, not really concerned with this. "Of course, Baachan."

Though Karura and Yashamaru both warned Sasori and Chiyo not to work Shizune too hard, they were both strict taskmasters, and as it turned out, their efforts paid off—Shizune became a genin within a year of her training being started, and was promoted to chunin two years later.

-0-

Sasori chose the apartment he rented primarily because it was once a storehouse for food, after it was a butcher's shop, and it had a basement that had at one time served as a wine-cellar, and before that, as a slaughterhouse—the basement now served a purpose that was somewhat similar to that. The basement had tile flooring and walls, with narrow windows at the place where the walls met the ceiling, and when open provided a steady hum of the streets above, but were always left closed and tinted. There was a drain in the middle of the floor and sluices leading down to it that proved very useful, in the grand scheme of things.

The tables were often washed down with a shower hose—Sasori's water bills were going through the roof and the landlord was under the impression that the two inhabitants of the two-story apartment were far more fond of showers than what was considered normal for Suna villagers.

He remained perfectly impassive as small hands delved deep into the incision made in the corpse's belly, ripping out intestines and flinging them casually into a sluice—the drain would be opened completely to allow their passage downwards later. Sasori had already embalmed the body—it was important to preserve a corpse when preparing it to be turned into a puppet—but it needed to be removed of organs so he could hollow out the skin properly and fit it over a puppet body of wood and bone; bone was where the richest deposits of chakra resided, apart from the blood vessels.

As he continued the laborious task of hollowing out the corpse on the table—the man had been a Leaf nin who got to close to a puppet wielded by Sasori—Sasori began to get the strong impression, for the first time, that he couldn't do all of this himself.

He'd need an assistant, but who to trust? Sasori had become much more guarded since the incident in which the investigative board assembled in order to look into the Sandaime Kazekage's disappearance had attempted to bring him to trial. Their case had fallen apart eventually, but still, he knew he had to be careful.

Chiyo, of course, was out of the question. The making of human puppets was forbidden—it had been Chiyo herself, in fact, who had outlawed this jutsu—and Chiyo of all people would revile this violation of the laws set down by the Puppet Corps.

Yashamaru was a skilled medic but couldn't be trusted to keep a secret. Karura could, on the other hand, but she detested such a thing as the making of puppets from once living flesh and though Sasori knew she would never give him away to the authorities Karura would never forgive him for something like this. He couldn't feel guilt at what he did now, but he didn't relish the thought of losing _her_.

Shizune was for the moment discounted on account of her age. She was bright and curious, but Sasori didn't expect such a young child to be capable of keeping a momentous secret such as this.

If it ended up being her, it would have to wait until later.

-0-

Shizune, being observant, couldn't help but notice that Sasori had been spending a far greater amount of time in their basement since Karura had revealed she was engaged to Sabaku no Takeo, and suspected the reason herself, but didn't say a word concerning it. Sasori's outbursts of temper were few and far between but quite spectacular and never failed to terrify her.

However, on the third night in a row when he was still in the basement past midnight, Shizune had to start to worry.

Her brow furrowed as she stood at the door that led down to the basement. Shizune stood at the threshold, hand poised on the doorknob, hesitating.

She had always been curious about the basement, had heard water running underneath in the bowels of the apartment for as long as she had lived there. But Sasori had forbid her to ever go down to the basement, and Shizune—she couldn't remember if she had always been like this, but supposes she might have been—was naturally obedient, and wasn't inclined to press her luck.

But he'd been down there for hours, and Shizune couldn't help but be concerned considering she knew he'd never had supper tonight.

Eventually, curiosity outweighed respect and fear, and Shizune pressed open the door and began to creep down into the depths of the basement.

Knowing Sasori, she couldn't say she was terribly surprised by what she saw, and it wasn't the sight of Sasori in the process of disemboweling a corpse on a table that gave Shizune pause; she was strong-stomached enough that _seeing_ certain things wasn't enough to do that to her. It was instead the smell that made her a bit weak in the knees.

The strong smell of bleach and disinfectant rose in the air, almost strong enough to give off fumes, but underneath their laid an undercurrent of another kind. The smell underneath bleach and cleaning fluids was dusty and reminiscent of dried blood faded into cloth. Death in the form of a musty odor reared its ugly head even when Sasori tried to drown it out with bleach.

After a moment, Shizune drew a deep breath in through her mouth and kept walking.

Sasori seemed no more surprised to see Shizune in the basement—his workshop, she now realized—than she had been to see what he worked on—while Shizune had noticed how much more time Sasori spent in the basement of late, Sasori had noticed how she had watched him more closely ever since he'd been investigated for the disappearance of the Sandaime.

She stood, stock-still at the base of the stair case, while Sasori, hands still bloody, came to stand directly in front of her. He raised a single scarlet eyebrow. "Well, Shizune. You're a smart girl; I imagine you can guess what I'm doing."

Shizune nodded. "Yes, Sasori-sama," she half-whispered. She knew from Chiyo about the art of human puppetry, of making puppets from human corpses. It was a forbidden jutsu, but things being forbidden had never stopped Sasori before.

He narrowed his eyes and knelt so light red-brown eyes were on level with dark brown ones. Bloodied hands were held a hairsbreadth from Shizune's head. "I can make you forget that we ever had this conversation, you know," he murmured. "It will be as if you never came to the basement tonight. You would lose the last half-hour of your life, but you would eventually cease to worry on what you can't remember."

It was a test. Shizune had learned when Sasori and Chiyo, Sasori especially, when she was being tested in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with genjutsu or puppetry or medical ninjutsu. This could be the most important one of her life.

"You don't need…" she sucked in a deep breath "…you don't need to do that." Shizune willed herself not to look at the prone body on the table, blood dripping off the side to fall into a sluice with the help of a shower hose. "I want to help," and Shizune was surprised to discover that she actually did.

Sasori stared at her for a moment, translucent eyes searing into her skin.

Then, he nodded, clipped but slow.

"Good. I'm glad we cleared this up."

-0-

The day Karura got married, she didn't see Sasori anywhere in the small crowd. She hadn't expected him to come, but his absence still stung, deep down in a place where her new husband couldn't see, couldn't touch. Of course he wouldn't have come, knowing what she did, Karura knew that, but she'd still wanted to see him come.

Later though, during the reception, almost like an apparition out of a golden shaft of light coming through the line of tall windows in the stone chamber, even though Karura didn't see Sasori, she did see the little girl he'd taken on as an apprentice, bearing a box in her hands.

Shizune had taken her cues from Chiyo when it came to clothing, wearing loose-fitting robes as casual wear after the fashion of upper class women in Sunagakure society, but today she had discarded her flannel gray robes and wore instead a plainly woven linen kimono of a rich blue color. Karura was of the personal opinion that the child looked better in blue than she did in gray.

The girl flashed a pretty smile that didn't expose teeth—a slightly false smile, Karura noted, but didn't really care; it was typical of a kunoichi to have a smile not entirely there, even if this one was just a little girl—and bowed briefly at the waist, managing to keep a secure hold on the box at the same time.

"Karura-sama." Blinking shyly and not quite making eye contact, Shizune held out the box to Karura.

Karura smiled and took it from her; it wasn't very heavy, she noticed. "I take it Sasori sent this?" She couldn't quite hide the pang in her voice, but still said it with a smile that, like Shizune's, wasn't entirely there.

Shizune nodded vigorously. "Yes ma'am." She bit her lip, then continued. "He's here."

Immediately, Karura's eyes widened. "What, where?"

But her widened eyes were already being drawn to a shadow on the loggia. She handed the box back to Shizune and swept in the direction of the loggia.

-0-

Despite telling himself that he wouldn't allow himself to react this way, Sasori's breath still caught in his throat when Karura stepped into the loggia and the afternoon sunlight caught all over her, golden glow to one who didn't need it but still benefited anyway.

A half-hearted glare stole over her face momentarily but was soon gone. "Sasori, you should come yourself instead of sending a wedding present through a little girl. It's bad form to do that."

But Sasori barely heard her.

Her wedding kimono was lightweight desert silk, a rich, iridescent shade of dark green—Karura had always loved the color green, becoming a rare oasis in the desert—that, apart from the sea gray flecks found there, matched her eyes perfectly. The hazy perfume of sandalwood hovered around her like a nimbus. Karura's dark gold hair was too short to be put up in any elaborate style but was knotted behind her head, bangs falling to frame her face and ghost her neck. A dark summer rose was placed delicately at one temple.

And despite himself, Sasori's pale face softened. "You look… You look beautiful," he murmured lamely, despairing at the catch in his voice that he'd prayed wouldn't be there.

A soft, rueful laugh followed this. "You know, you are the only one who has ever called me that."

Sasori was sure now that he shouldn't have come.

As he turned jerkily to leave, a small hand caught his wrist in her fingers, and Karura was smiling sadly when Sasori turned around one last time.

"You were missed, you know," Karura murmured, so softly that they both knew her voice didn't carry to the reception inside.

Shadows fell over his face as he weighed his response, in as soft a tone as hers. "Only by you."

-0-

A glistening sheen of sweat glittered on Shizune's forehead as, down on her knees on the stone floor and still clad in the white protective clothing, she scrubbed a sluice clean of dried blood, the copper smell of blood and the musty smell of death no longer sickening her as it might have done before. Instead, she was nearly immune to it now, barely noticing it at all.

They were nearly done for tonight; Shizune had only to finish scrubbing down the sluices to be able to go to bed and fall into an exhausted, dreamless sleep—the apartment was the only place in which she ever slept well. Sasori was sitting down on a cleaned area of the floor, adding the final touches to an oddly misshapen human puppet.

When she was done, Sasori called her over with a terse, "Come look at this." Shizune knelt in front of him and stared at the puppet he was working on.

It had the vague appearance of a small man with a noticeable hunchback, dark brown and twisted. The face was the one of a Sand nin Sasori had killed lately—Shizune didn't know why and wasn't sure she cared—stretched over a wood-and-bone head. It was ill-fitting and had both the appearance and texture of leather, brown and tough and thick. Hiruko's black cornrows stuck up over the head. The whole thing still stank, Shizune noticed, of copper and iron and organs. It didn't bother her, but she was sure others would smell it if Sasori ever used the puppet in battle—she'd seen him spraying his human puppets down with liquid bleach before, presumably for the purpose of eradicating the scent of blood.

A noticeably ironic, strangely whimsical expression came over Sasori's lip-quirked face. "I think Hiruko would appreciate this, don't you?"

Shizune didn't answer the sardonic question, instead drinking in the sight of the puppet's cumbersome body. "It doesn't look like it will make a very good war puppet, Sasori-sama," she pointed out dubiously. The only purpose such a unwieldy puppet could serve in war was defense, but Hiruko wasn't big enough for that.

The bizarre humor radiating off of Sasori intensified. "It's not a war puppet, Shizune, though it will eventually make a lethal weapon. I will instead be using it as a body in which to hide under certain circumstances."

There was nothing she could say to this; Shizune was lost for words. "Sasori-sama?"

"There will be situations when I need to go somewhere incognito, and unfortunately, my face has become a little too well known to use it all of the time. I will be making modifications to Hiruko's body in order to make him war-worthy."

Shizune supposed that was why Sasori had bought those chunks of ivory, and why he was mixing a new poison without telling Chiyo or Yashamaru or any of the medics or puppeteers of Sunagakure. There could only really be one reason for that.

She frowned as she traced a finger along the hunched back of the Hiruko puppet body. "But won't this body be noticeable. It's hardly what anyone would call unobtrusive."

Sasori chuckled darkly at this. "I don't think I'll have to worry about that. You see, Shizune, civilians may gawk at a body like this one, but the men we really need to worry always choose not to see those with deformities. I may as well be invisible to any shinobi who might pose a threat."

Slowly, Shizune nodded. That made sense, she supposed.

-0-

"I wasn't aware that the hospital was such a popular social attraction," Karura remarked wryly, lying listless on the bed as the three others crowded around her. Yashamaru sat on the bed with her, uncaring of what might be considered boundaries—they'd always been especially close for siblings. Sasori knelt by the bed and Shizune sat in the windowsill, watching and feeling like an intruder on a private scene.

Karura, for her part, was doing her best to put the girl at ease. "So, Shizune, I hear you're a chunin now. How does that feel?"

The pale-faced girl flushed and ducked her head. "Satisfying, Karura-sama." Sasori caught her eye and she remembered what he had told her—that though she was a chunin now she wouldn't be a full member of the Murasaki puppetry sect for another three years, at least. She still felt oddly triumphant, though, and Sasori wasn't doing anything to lessen that triumph.

Yashamaru smiled at his sister. "And how does it feel, oneesan, to be a mother again?"

She grimaced. "Tiring. If any expectant mother ever tells you, Yashamaru, that they don't think labor will be terribly painful, if they have had _any_ experience with childbirth at all, I fully expect you to check their blood for toxicity, got it?"

The medic leaned and kissed her cheek, a little lingeringly, Shizune noted with a raised eyebrow—being only ever in the company of adults Shizune was learning to notice things that no other child her age ever would have. "Of course, Karura."

If Sasori himself ever noticed, he didn't give any sign of it. "Where's the child now, Karura?" he asked quietly, reaching over and clasping her tanned fingers in his long, white ones.

She shrugged, oddly disinterested. "Back at the Kazekage's compound, I suppose. Kankuro—" named for an ancestor on his father's side, though Shizune noted, again with interest, that Karura refrained from telling Sasori that "—was perfectly healthy; there was no need to keep him at the hospital."

All seemed happy, but there was a shadow hanging over the room, over the whole hospital. Shizune felt the dark cloud buzzing angrily like hordes of swarming bees in her ears, but couldn't determine the poison in their stings.

-0-

Dispassionate and detached, Shizune, with hands washed in a bath of blood and pale, soft skin barely touched by the harsh rays of the desert sun, stared down at the twisted, mangled mass of flesh at her feet, already starting to melt into the dunes that swallowed everything if allowed to.

The man had been a shinobi from Iwagakure, of what rank Shizune couldn't be sure besides the fact that he was at least of chunin rank—he wore the heavy mud brown flak jacket of Iwagakure.

It had been her first kill, and it had been quite a bit messier than Shizune had thought it would be.

In the heat of battle, not everyone could tell when an enemy nin was coming up from behind them. Shizune hadn't heard him coming, even with his pathetic excuse for desert stealth, and within a second she was off her feet.

At that range, she couldn't use any puppets. His rough hands were heavy as lead or dull iron on her shoulders, pushing her down into the sand as far as she could go without drowning. Greedy, ravenous, even as Shizune tried to wriggle away from him like a snake writhing in the sand. She remembered the cold, animal hunger of his eyes, dark like bottomless pools of water—he wanted his satisfaction and didn't care who he got it from, didn't care who he had to get it from, be it a grown woman or a little girl.

No puppets would have saved her, but the Iwa nin had left the kunai pouch on his thigh open—and with his knees driving down into her legs to keep her somewhat still as clumsy hands fumbled at the fastenings of her pants, the kunai pouch was close to her hand.

She drove it in, again and again, but still he came—adrenaline was a funny thing, and it allowed the nin to keep going even after being stabbed. He only backed away after Shizune, desperate now, drove a senbon through his eye, and that, she suspected, only stopped him because it was poisoned.

Now, Shizune stood over him, quite and pale as she retrieved the senbon from the glazed gray eye of the Iwa shinobi—it was her instrument, and no one else could have it, not even by chance. They would die on the poison that her body was numb to.

It was much messier than she thought it would be—there were blotches like spilt ink on her shirt, so red they seemed black. And Shizune oddly found herself to be much calmer than she had thought she would be.

From her studies in the Sunagakure Academy, she knew that there were three reactions to the first kill that were considered "normal" for Suna shinobi.

One, that they would be sick.

Two, that they would cry.

Three, that they would have something akin to a nervous breakdown, but that they would recover soon enough.

But Shizune instead stood calm, pale and silent over her first victim, unable to think of anything to say. This was, she supposed, so very insignificant. Just one more body to add to the unbearable fleshy tide of war.

"Shizune." Sasori was standing over her, taking in her blood-soaked clothes with narrowed eyes dark around the edges with kohl that made his eyelashes seem far longer than they were. There was no trace of emotion underneath the pale, translucently freckled mask of his face—Shizune could only guess at what he was thinking.

The chunin from the Sand village stood straight and tall as she could, meeting her master's gaze squarely with a noncommittal expression. But now, her stomach was roiling as she had never thought it capable of doing.

"I take it that this one was yours?"

Shizune nodded silently.

Sasori knelt by the body, and seemed to consider, momentarily, sealing this one up in a scroll too to be made into a human puppet. Then, as far as she could tell, he thought better of it and drew back to his feet, following after the company of Sand nin returning to Sunagakure. The smell was in the air, that these were the closing acts of the war, but the fighting still cut trenches, rivers of blood through the desert sands.

"Shizune, come."

As she followed after him, footsteps strangely uneven—she couldn't understand why; her heartbeat was perfectly even, her pulse normal—Shizune thought, an undercurrent to a river, that she was thankful that this body would be left to rot, that she wouldn't have to face his visage on a wooden table in the basement or scrub his blood out of the sluices.

-0-

The shutters of the window had been shut against the violently cold night winds of the desert in late December, but the wind battered against the sandalwood shutters with the sort of rabid howls Shizune more expected to hear from jackals as they scavenged what the Sand nin left behind.

Not that there would be as much of that as there used to be, now that the war had finally come to a close.

Shizune stole a huge-eyed, newly timorous look at Karura, lying prostrate on the twin bed—made for only one—pressed up against the wall. The war against Iwa and Konoha and Kumo may have been over, but there was a new war brewing, a war with no combat or bloody skirmishes but one far more insidious than that.

She had slipped into the locked chamber of the Kazekage's wife unnoticed, and even if she had been noticed, no one would have been concerned by the presence of an eight-and-a-half year old girl in what had become Karura's prison cell (Though there would be a different room for a death chamber, Shizune would later learn). The room itself was dark except for a single candle that flickered gold and red on the walls; it had an eerie feel that made Shizune want to speak in whispers.

Silently, she clambered onto the bed beside Karura, studying her intently and wishing she could take back what she saw.

Karura had, in her months of captivity, grown waxen pale where her skin had once been healthy honey gold—she was now paler than Sasori or even Shizune herself. Flesh had melted from bones, her breasts and belly seeming especially engorged as a result—even beneath the surface of the dark brown linen robes (Karura despised these clothes but they were the only thing that could be drawn over her body with any ease), Shizune could see how her stomach bulged and her breasts, long since released of any binding, strained against the brown cloth. Her skirt was a smooth dome over her belly. Her hair had lost its luster, looked like the fibers of a broom. Green eyes were more like dull stones than polished glass.

Shizune of course, had heard what had happened, and flinched a little bit when she noticed all the sand in a chamber that should have been clean—emerging from cracks in the wall and floor, sifting through the thin sheets of her bed, emerging out from under Karura's fingernails and eyelashes.

The Kazekage's wife had fought bitterly against her confinement, turning the Kazekage's compound into a house of screaming, and eventually, stripped of all weapons, had her chakra sealed in order to keep her from tearing the door down, and staring down at her from her sitting position besides Karura on the bed, Shizune had to wonder if she hadn't been sedated as well.

Then, she realized that the listless woman was most likely not sedated—that would have been harmful to the baby and the _other_ sharing a body with Karura and her unborn son. Briefly, Shizune wondered if the creature sang to her when she slept or if Karura's nights were silent.

Karura might have been sleeping fitfully with her eyes open, until they, the only thing left to her that still seemed to have a spark of the old fire—and, in a moment, that fire was gone, flushed out—turned on Shizune, gray flecks seeming black. "Where is Sasori?"

Something choked in Shizune's throat at this. She didn't know where Sasori was; no one did. The Kazekage had sent him on assignment months ago and he hadn't come back since—no one knew if he was even still alive. He was gone, vanished when he was most needed—because Shizune knew that if anyone could have stopped this, it was Sasori.

"I don't know," Shizune whispered, and in a moment, she was crying, whimpering, tears rolling down her cheeks like rain in the mountains a year ago, the only rain she could ever remember pinging off her skin.

She didn't know why she was crying. The last time Shizune could ever remember crying was that first night when she had woken up in Sasori's arms in Kawa no Kuni. She had cried because she was little and cold and didn't know where she was. She couldn't remember anything—that was a thought Shizune still was loath to revisit, shaken by that vast expanse of forgotten memory that was her life before she had woken in Sasori's arms, because she suspected that there was something there, something that she wasn't sure she'd like if she ever did remember—and that was the worst of it. She'd cried and cried and cried until Sasori had hushed her and murmured something that made her sleep.

Now, Sasori was gone. He'd been a presence in her life for literally as long as Shizune could remember. He had been at times sarcastic, intimidating, irritated, moody, vicious, melancholic, whimsical, begrudgingly supportive, but Shizune had never realized how much she needed him until now, when she hadn't seen him for over eight months—Chiyo's house seemed so large and empty. She had, of course, made sure no one ventured into the basement during Sasori's prolonged absence, but guarding his secrets wasn't enough to sustain her and she was so afraid—more afraid of this than perhaps anything else—of being alone.

There couldn't be a surprise more vivid than the one that came when Karura responded to Shizune's tears by wrapping wasted, bony arms around her body and drawing her down to the bed with her, one hand wound in Shizune's fine dark hair and the other wrapped around her waist almost—but not quite—in the fashion of a lover, holding her close. Shizune ended up crying into her neck, feeling the muscles underneath the skin work madly as her tears wet the skin—falling on the area of her neck painted black with a garish chakra seal, almost like necrotic flesh heralding death come early—and her teeth brushed bones barely masked by tight, pale skin.

The chamber smelled like death. Not the way the basement in her and Sasori's apartment did; it didn't smell like death painted in copper and iron. Instead, it smelled like the sort of death that hung over and hadn't happened yet, the sort of musty, damp mould that proliferated in dark corners. Bodies pressed together, Shizune could feel Karura's stomach, and it was unlike any pregnant woman she had ever examined under Yashamaru or Chiyo's supervision—instead of firm but pliant, Karura's pregnant belly was hot and hard as sun-baked stone.

-0-

Sasori returned to the village in February, sporting a new expanse of translucent pale red freckles across the bridge of his nose and a somewhat irritated demeanor, irritation at the Yondaime Kazekage who had kept him away from Sunagakure for so long—though he cared little for Suna itself, there were people in it whom he still cared for.

Yashamaru met him at the gate, and the world proceeded to fall apart from there.

The puppeteer would never know how, in Karura's last night no one was aware she was in labor until nearly three hours after her contractions began. She had stuffed her fist in her mouth to silence her screams, determined to have this child alone where perhaps she could preserve both her life and his, but it came to naught. Eventually the smell of blood and amniotic fluid, a noxious mixture and impossible to ignore, filtered through the door, and the guards burst through thinking she'd found some way to make herself bleed but were instead horrified by the sight of a woman writhing in labor, skirt pulled up to her hips, legs raddled with blood and clear, colorless liquid. Needless to say, Chiyo was called immediately—and Sasori would never forgive his grandmother for her involvement in this sordid affair.

And Sasori didn't need to know it. He could imagine Karura doing something such as this, and the only thing that kept him from marching up to the Kazekage's compound and systematically assassinating the new widower was Yashamaru talking him down from it, and Sasori was still so blinded from his own grief and rage that he couldn't see the blank-eyed way Yashamaru spoke of his brother-in-law, like he was hiding something he shouldn't have been.

Another thing Sasori didn't notice was the thinly veiled _something_ hiding behind his gray eyes when Sasori held Gaara—his third godchild—in his arms, ran fingers through the fuzz of dark, bloody red hair and stared into almond-shaped eyes framed by black lack-of-sleep rings. The fussy baby only calmed in his godfather's arms.

None of this really mattered anymore.

It was nearly nightfall when he got back to his apartment—Shizune was of course waiting for him sitting in a windowsill. Sasori paid no attention to her until the next morning, collapsing on his bed though he didn't sleep for even a moment throughout the night, instead staring up at the ceiling and wondering how the world could have started to burn and fall apart in just a few hours.

Why did it have to be her who was gone?

In the morning, however, he deigned to notice Shizune's nervous, faintly miserable presence at the kitchen table, staring, watching him keenly like a mouse who waited for the bell to toll and the cat to pounce and rip into flesh. "Come walk with me."

They passed through the outer sectors of Suna—the poorer districts, away from the interior where enemy nin would likely never reach if there was ever the ill-fated invasion the builders of Sunagakure had do feared—Shizune nearly having to run to keep up with him. Sasori, who wasn't noticing a lot of things lately, had no idea that his apprentice was running nearly ten yards behind him.

Though he couldn't see it, her dark brown eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in understanding, and pain, and her stomach began to roil again as it had so many times recently, in foreboding. If Sasori was going where she thought he was going, he wouldn't like what he found.

He waited for a moment, when he got to the graveyard outside of the city limits—it was an old tradition that no bodies could be buried within the limits of a city, to desert-dwellers who believed that dead spirits would haunt them if they were buried too near their homes. He stared around the rows of graves, trying to find hers.

Sasori hoped that he'd be granted this comfort, at least.

Small footsteps sounded behind him, and Sasori didn't turn around. To Shizune, he was as cold, as remote, as utterly unreachable as he had ever been. "Shizune, where was she buried?"

"S-Sasori-sama?" She was stuttering again.

Sasori closed his eyes tight and willed himself to be patient with the girl. "Where," he asked, in a voice so soft it more resembled the spring wind, "was Karura buried?"

He turned and Shizune's answer horrified him. She shook her head, face utterly white. "She…she wasn't buried, Sasori-sama."

"Then what was done with her body?"

Shizune pointed a trembling finger out towards the dunes. "Out there," she whispered, and Sasori understood.

The final insult. The only bodies ever disposed of in the desert were those from families so poor that they could not afford burial or cremation or, more commonly, criminals and traitors. Karura's cold body had been thrown out into the dunes like a common criminal's, to be scavenged by vultures and jackals.

He hadn't even known she was pregnant again.

"Leave."

"I—"

"Go _away_, Shizune."

-0-

A fountain of blood squirted in Shizune's face and she shrieked, jumping back and dropping her scalpel so it clattered on the tile floor. What blood didn't hit her face splattered into a sluice, and she resisted a sigh—more work for her after all was said and done. The body on the table didn't give any more secrets—for the moment, anyway—than that insulting spurt of blood.

"I suppose you should feel grateful that I had you wear a mask over your mouth tonight," Sasori remarked, and went back to working on the corpse while Shizune ducked down to retrieve her scalpel, wiping it clean on her apron—regularly bleached with the strongest cleaning fluid in all of Suna; no one ever really wanted to talk to the girl who smelled so strongly of bleach and death.

There was not even the faintest trace of humor in Sasori's voice. He had not cracked a smile, had not so much as made a single whimsically ironic statement, in a year. Pale eyes verging on red were cold now, not apathetic but rather masked—he'd received a summons to join ANBU and Shizune had been relieved, inordinately, when Sasori refused; she knew the casualty rate for Suna ANBU, and was glad that Sasori had at least maintained his sanity to _that_ extent.

Shizune stared hard at Sasori's face as they continued their grisly work. There were dark shadows around his eyes that had nothing to do with the kohl smudged around to keep the sun off—if anything, Sasori generally removed the kohl when he came back for the night, and it was gone now. Besides, the circles were blue and purple, mottled like bruises. He didn't sleep very well.

His raspy voice was raised only for terse commands and the most cutting of comments. Eyes were dead like the puppets he made with such finesse—he'd always been elegant at his craft but nowadays they were made with such fine detail attached that anyone would think that entire worlds had been poured into the making.

Shizune had begun making rudimentary puppets herself, and didn't know if she would ever carve bamboo or date palm wood or sandalwood (for the ones she meant to be more durable) with the sort of craftsmanship Sasori showed himself capable of.

The puppet master sighed as he stared down at the body. "Damn it," he muttered.

She frowned. "What is it?"

"I just realized… The body's unworkable for a human puppet. Old Hideharu wasn't taking particularly good care of his body. His smoking habit seems to have eroded his chakra channels, look."

Sasori pointed it out, and Shizune leaned over and saw that he was right. There were signs of erosion damage in his chakra channels, when Shizune was able to see past all the blood glittering on veins and blood vessels.

Her small face flushed. "I'm sorry; I didn't notice."

"Never mind that." Sasori's cool voice cut her off and Shizune's cheeks reached a color that rivaled his hair. "But you'll have to dispose of the body. And pay closer attention next time." He rang off the rebuke as one would discuss the weather.

She hung her head in shame. "Yes, Sasori-sama." As ever, his disapproval stung.

-0-

"Now you see what I go through?" Yashamaru sounded weirdly triumphant for such a thing, and Shizune couldn't help but smile her shy, somewhat quavering smile—they were both exhausted and draped like cloth drying on a line hanging in the air in the gap between the second floors of houses opposite each other on the street. He had spoken the truth when he said that the day shift at the Sunagakure hospital was a truly hellish occupation.

The young girl, a chunin for several years when other girls her age might have been newly minted genin, twisted at the lines of her sash. Ever since her acceptance into the Murasaki puppetry sect two years ago, she'd worn a lavender silk sash at her waist and a scarf of the same at her throat, made from a bolt of lavender silk cloth given to her as a gift by Chiyo—Chiyo, who had taught her medical ninjutsu, Chiyo who had shown her how to apply kohl around her eyes correctly, in what consistency and heaviness, Chiyo who in an odd sort of way was more of a mother to her than Shizune supposed her own mother (if she could have even remembered her) had ever been.

"I can't see how you do it, every day," Shizune admitted. This was the first time for her—she was filling in for another medic—and she was worn down to the bone, drained even more than she was when staying up to the wee hours of the morning dissecting and disemboweling corpses with Sasori.

The way Yashamaru leaned down and kissed her cheek—"You're sweet," he murmured with an indecipherable tone—reminded Shizune of the way he had kissed his sister that day in the hospital so many years ago (hard to believe that "so many years" was in fact only five; it seemed like an eternity and a half), soft, lingering a little longer than what was appropriate, and Shizune knew immediately that he was remember his sister. He was always remembering Karura when he got like this.

And Shizune remembered now, too. She remembered how his eyes had been whenever he looked at his sister—warm, too warm, too hot for the desert, possessive—and remembered all the whispers, that maybe Sabure Yashamaru had loved his sister a little too much. And how she'd never believed it. And how she was beginning to have her doubts.

She remembered—didn't have to remember, could still see it playing out before her now—how Yashamaru seemed to change in the presence of his youngest nephew. His eyes would grow a little chill, a little cool, a little reserved, and Shizune, like a lone traveler standing at the edge of a storm front, wondered what would become of it.

-0-

Sasori balanced his chin on one hand and stared at the woman sitting opposite him at the table in the dining hall of the inn. "Forgive me, if I'm not used to being in such…_esteemed_ company." In truth, he looked at her as anything but esteemed, having listened to his grandmother talk since he was a child.

Blue light spilled in slants over Tsunade's flawless porcelain-mask-artificial-perfect face as she shot him a look that could only be described as a mixture of boredom and bemusement. She seemed so much like an overgrown child that it seemed almost ridiculous. "I sympathize." Tsunade spun together the words with a healthy strain of skepticism.

As far as he knew, Tsunade traveled alone—she was a notorious loner, that much was known, and far preferred the company of her sake and her gambling debts over other people. Personally, Sasori found it highly amusing that the "princess" of the founding clan of Konohagakure had degraded herself to the level of an alcoholic and shiftless vagrant.

It was teeth-clenched courtesy that made them speak to each other at all; Sasori was beginning to get the impression that under any other, Tsunade would be quite happy to try to cave his face in.

They were a little similar though. Neither one of them showed their years—while it was well-known how Tsunade hid her age, Sasori preferred to keep that to himself. Immortality should be kept a secret, Sasori decided; otherwise everyone would want to know how it was done.

Both found themselves at a loss for anything more to say to each other and were beginning to get comfortable with the idea that they would just spend the next hour glaring at one another, when Tsunade's amber eyes fell to the doorway and her face grew alabaster white, eyes widening in shock.

Sasori followed her gaze. Shizune was standing in the doorway, one hand braced on the threshold. She frowned uncertainly.

Red eyes shot from Tsunade to Shizune and back again to the blonde, and Sasori himself paled a little when he realized that the light in Tsunade's eyes was that of recognition.

He took action immediately.

Fingers skating across the surface of the table, Sasori stood and fixed Shizune in his gaze, making no mistake of the words that left his lips. "Go on up." He was careful not to say Shizune's name aloud for fear of the sort of effect it would have on Tsunade. "I'll be there in a minute."

Shizune dipped her torso in a shallow bow, "Hai, Sasori-sama," and left.

And Sasori turned his attention back to Tsunade's profoundly shaken gaze. He would have found it satisfying to see this proud, vain woman jarred from her apathy, if it were under any circumstance but this.

"Who was that?" Tsunade's sharp voice hit a squeaking note; her pupils were noticeably dilated.

The struggle to be noncommittal was easily won. Sasori tilted his head like an observant bird at her, to all appearances perfectly detached. "My apprentice." It wasn't necessary to tell her that he had taken Shizune with him on a mission into Hi no Kuni.

Tsunade nodded, and it was visible the effort she took to control herself, to make herself seem at least superficially calm. "I see." She hesitated, drew in a pregnant breath. "What…is her name?"

Sasori couldn't avoid it now. "Shizune."

"And surname?" Amber eyes became a thousand times keener at the mention of the girl's name.

"She has none." Sasori raised an eyebrow. "Is that so unusual?" _For a Sunagakure villager_, he added silently, sure Tsunade could hear him.

And, truly, she did, shaking her head vigorously. "No, it's not." Her subsequent attempts to seem cheerful were so painfully obvious that Sasori could almost bark a short, dismissive laugh at Tsunade's sheer _transparency_. "Tell me—" the Sannin was forcing her tone to be light "—how is she progressing?"

To this came a languid shrug. "Quite well. Shizune's bright, and talented. She'll be taking the jonin exams soon—I expect her to pass," Sasori remarked tersely; better not to say any more than what was absolutely necessary. It was rare praise, praise Sasori would never allow Shizune to hear; it was more than a little embarrassing to see someone's face light up the way Shizune's did to hear herself praised.

Blue slants of light caught on pale gold hair as Tsunade jerked her head up and down again, forceful as before. "That's…that's good." Sasori wasn't sure he wanted to know what could reduce such an overbearing woman to stuttering.

Still caught in a concoction of suspicion and foreboding—if not handled correctly, Sasori was afraid that this was going to get very ugly—Sasori kept a sharp eye on Tsunade while staring out the window. He was going to have figure out how to handle this without it blowing up, and quickly.

They'd leave in a few hours, once they'd caught their bearings. That was all Sasori could think to do.

-0-

For nearly eleven years, Tsunade had been haunted by the ghost of one who was dead and the ghost of one who had vanished as though she had never been at all, not left even a momentary imprint on the world she'd lived in. These ghosts, not even a drowning death in sake could extinguish; they were always with her, tapping on her shoulders and whispering in her ears.

Sure—hopeful—that Sasori, who was still downstairs, wouldn't find out about this, Tsunade pressed open the door to the room Shizune and Sasori were sharing—the three of them were the only guests in the inn at the time, careful to be gentle. She almost felt like she would expect to find some sort of monster on the other side.

Shizune had been sitting on her bed, reading a book that clattered to the floor when Tsunade entered—amber eyes fell on the pages and saw a diagram of a puppet, before the girl pushed it under the bed with her foot. Like a soldier when the commanding officer was present, she hopped to attention and bowed. "Tsunade-sama." No one, especially Tsunade, could have helped but notice that she didn't rise from her bow.

Amber eyes burned into the top of her dark-haired head—fine hairs glistened blue in the light—until Tsunade remembered herself, her heart going back to steady beats, and she tapped the teenager's shoulder. "You can stand straight, you know."

With her back straightened out, Tsunade saw a lanky girl in her early teens, who already stood taller than her, with the most bizarrely sweet, guileless smile that should not have been painted on the face of a chunin, nearly jonin of the Hidden Sand. And looking at her, even with different colorings, Tsunade saw a face so reminiscent of Dan's that it made her heart ache. But she could not be sure.

"It…It's a pleasure to…meet you," Shizune managed, so nervous she was reduced to a slight stutter. Sure enough, Tsunade heard the slightly crooning accent of Sunagakure strong in her speech, but there was something beneath it. Something long buried.

Draped in gray linen and lavender silk, Shizune stared at her with a mixture of unexpected pleasure and nervousness. Tsunade found herself drinking in the girl's face before she remembered herself again. "Sasori-san said you were his apprentice?" she asked, slightly husky voice unusually gentle.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I see. And were you born in Kaze no Kuni?"

Shizune stiffened slightly at Tsunade's line of questioning but continued to play to her tune. "No." Tsunade's heart jumped at this but crashed at what Shizune followed up with. "I was born in a village in Kawa no Kuni."

Forcing herself to remain composed, Tsunade aimed another question at her. "And how did you come to be in Sunagakure?"

Shizune looked away and long fingers went to fidgeting with her sleeve cuff—this plainly made her uncomfortable, skin crawling. "During wartime, my family was killed by Konoha nin. Sasori-sama took me back to Suna with him—I'll never understand why," she admitted, smiling a little wistfully. "I don't think he's all that fond of children." Tsunade would never know that Shizune could only rattle off the facts of her past because Sasori had told them to her.

Swallowing hard, feeling so much at a loss, Tsunade nodded. "Ah. Excuse me."

If Shizune was wondering why Tsunade wasn't at her belligerent best, than the latter didn't care.

It was only when she was in the hall, leaning tiredly—suddenly exhausted—against the wall, glazed eyes searching the ceiling, that Tsunade realized that she hadn't breathed the whole time she was in the hotel room.

All of it could be excused. The name "Shizune" was neither overly common nor terribly uncommon; Tsunade had heard children referred to by that name before and her head had snapped in the direction of the caller every time. There was no proof that Tsunade knew of that could brand Sasori a kidnapper; Shizune's almost supernatural similarity in features to Dan could be so easily explained away. Genetic tests—if Tsunade could even obtain material—would be discredited easily. Tsunade could hear the arguments now; results could be faked, easily.

No proof. She had no proof.

-0-

"So, I take it you've heard that Yashamaru is dead." Sasori made the remark with little interest as he mixed liquefied herbs together, trying to see if the concoction would be viable as a poison.

It was bizarre, really. Once, he'd considered Yashamaru one of his closest friends, but now, his death meant nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. And that Gaara had nearly died too was nothing; Sasori had barely even interacted with his godchildren. They were strangers to him. He never saw them, couldn't pick them out in a street—except for Gaara, of course; no one could mistake Gaara.

Beside him, holding a vial up to the light—Shizune had, Sasori was relieved to notice, taken a liking to working with poisons; puppeteers couldn't be squeamish about these things—the girl teenager nodded, blinking down at him. It was a little irritating to know that Shizune was taller than him now, but he could handle it, he supposed.

Her face was noticeably masked—the open book had been closed. "Yes, Sasori-sama, I did."

Shizune, for herself, was remembering how he had kissed her cheek and run a hand through her hair and—

No, that had been Karura. That had been Karura.

-0-

Sasori raised an eyebrow as he examined the two corpses Shizune had brought in that night. This messiness was certainly not Shizune's calculated, precise work.

The bodies were instead mangled—he couldn't even determine gender. The skin looked as though it had sanded down, faces locked in contortions of grotesque screams; fingers were clenched, muscles locked. The nose was completely gone off of one.

"While I don't find any of this to be particularly horrifying," he noted critically, "Shizune, where did you _get_ these bodies? This is certainly not your handiwork."

Dark brown eyes roamed over the landscape of ruined flesh, detached, perfectly detached—she was becoming what the people of her home village would most likely have termed a highly disturbed young woman, though Shizune's behavior was hardly anything atypical of Suna puppeteers; by their standards she was perfectly well-adjusted. "From Gaara-kun," Shizune whispered, kohl-lined eyes going wide.

"Oh… That explains it."

-0-

The look on Kabuto's face as he noted Shizune walking in behind Sasori in the Hiruko shell—personally, Sasori didn't think he would ever be comfortable enough with the child to step out of Hiruko in his presence—in the hotel on the border of Kaze, Kawa and Ame no Kuni. It was raining outside, much to the ire of the two Sand nin, neither of whom liked rain; thunder rolled overhead.

Sasori nodded to Shizune to guard the door of the deserted dining hall so they'd know if anyone came in, and the moment she was out of earshot, Kabuto remarked, "I wasn't aware you had a child, Sasori-sama." Off-key humor, as per usual.

Not taking any particular offense nor any particular pleasure in this, Sasori fixed a beady-eyed glare on Kabuto, having the desired effect—the boy wilted slightly, eyes now fixed on the floor. "She's not my daughter," Sasori informed him flatly, and left Kabuto to come to the desired conclusion—that Shizune was another plant.

At Sasori's behest the spy in the Leaf Village sat down at a table so the two would be on eye level. "What did you tell your sensei?" Sasori demanded, knowing he needed to know.

Kabuto only shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with this—and he could almost believe he was. "I mixed a powder in with his drink that'll have him unconscious for the next ten hours, at least, so we should be alright."

"And your teammates?"

"The same."

After that, Kabuto launched into his list of what he had learned in Konohagakure and Otogakure—this was the sort of boy who, Sasori had long since learned, could maneuver himself out of nearly any sort of trouble so deftly that it was almost impossible to tell that he'd ever been in trouble in the first place; that made him a prime candidate to send to Orochimaru—clinical and indifferent the way a medic in Suna was when reading off the list of those who had died under the scalpel. He drank in Sasori's new orders in silence, keeping a carefully calm expression up though Sasori could feel the resentment, buzzing like an angry cloud.

The moment Sasori had finished, black eyes flicked back to Shizune leaning in the threshold, burning with curiosity.

An exasperated sigh tore itself from Sasori's lips beneath the Hiruko shell. "If you're so curious, then go talk to her yourself. As you said, you have plenty of time."

He didn't need any more encouragement than that.

Sasori immediately got the impression that exposing Shizune to Kabuto might have been a mistake.

The boy could be disarmingly charming when he wanted to be, and he certainly seemed to want to be tonight. Shizune, painfully shy and not used to quite the sort of attention that was being paid to her by the younger child, grew increasingly flustered by the second, the deep shadows falling over her face as she ducked her head and smiled shyly.

Sasori couldn't tell if Kabuto was doing this out of a genuine interest in the girl or if he was just trying to irritate Sasori—and if it was the latter he had certainly achieved his goal, and then some. Personally, he was fully aware of the extent to which Kabuto was twisted, and how much he enjoyed annoying Sasori in ways in which he could do so with impunity—revenge for putting him under his jutsu in the first place. It would be easy to claim innocence in this case; Kabuto had, of course, known that.

Until this moment, Sasori hadn't been aware he could feel protective towards anyone besides Karura—he knew how it started, could see it "starting" right before his eyes. It was a bit bizarre of a feeling, to know what an alarmed father felt like.

And in this moment, Sasori decided to prove definitively that he did in fact have a conscience and displayed it by removing Shizune from Kabuto's presence. Quickly.

Light footsteps could be heard overhead as Shizune retreated to her room, both somewhat disquieted and relieved to be removed from the situation.

Kabuto smirked at Sasori, "She's charming," and the latter could not believe this was a thirteen-year-old boy he was dealing with.

The urge to tell Kabuto to go jump off a cliff and then make him do it was nearly overwhelming.

-0-

Pale, delicately fingered hands probed into a corpse so fresh it hadn't even begun to give off the sick-sweet odor of decay—it was instead the fresh smell of blood that filled Shizune's nostrils and failed to affect her the way it might have done others. She pulled out a tape measure and began to take measurements for the construction of a sandalwood-and-bone body to fit the skin that would be tanned until it looked old, sun-baked leather and would crease to her command.

Sasori came downstairs a few hours later, drawn by the smell of decay—the corpse had finally started to rot after the day's heat and the organs were starting to clog in the drain and the sluices—to see what the commotion was.

"You're starting to make human puppets of your own now?"

The faintly bewildered question that he was really asking was, _You're killing nin for your _own_ purpose now?_

Shizune had never cared for Sunagakure much more than Sasori had—she hadn't really cared for it at all, actually. There was none of the antipathy that Sasori felt for his village; instead in Shizune's case it was only apathy. There were only two people she'd ever bonded to who were still alive in this village—Chiyo, who had withdrawn and whom she never saw anymore, and Sasori, who despised the village of his birth beyond all reason now, and did a poor job hiding it.

There was nothing holding her down to Suna anymore, except that there wasn't anywhere else she particularly wanted to go, and that Sasori was there.

She could kill her compatriots without feeling anything.

With a short incline of the head, Shizune answered both of Sasori's questions. "Yes."

-0-

Like a paper butterfly on the wind the blue-haired woman swept down into Sasori's basement-underground workshop, sweeping her black cloak embellished with red clouds around her like a storm trapped on her pale flesh. Eyes like pale sapphires glimmered dully at Sasori.

"Did you receive our summons?" she murmured in the sort of tone that heralded a gloomy rainstorm, like she hadn't held the sun in her eyes for a lifetime. Sasori swept a glance over her and wondered that he wouldn't need to make any adjustments at all to turn her into a puppet, if he were to have the opportunity.

_It would be difficult to find the substance with which to make her eyes, though_, he mused, and decided that if he were to make this woman into a puppet he would make her eyes gold instead of pale blue.

"Yes, I did." Sasori rubbed a hand over his forehead and, on a whim, produced a yellow-white femur cleaned of blood for the woman from Ame's—he would have recognized that thick accent anywhere—inspection, the vicious parody of a smile on his face. "What do you think?"

To his distinct pleasure she took a step back, plainly startled. "It's…it's well-crafted."

The femur clattered to the table and Sasori turned back to his work, utterly dismissive. "You said the organization you're a member of is called the Akatsuki, didn't you?"

Taking her cue from him she nodded. "Yes, I did. We're expanding our membership and would appreciate your presence." Eyes lined in eye shadow that had begun to melt in the desert heat narrowed. "I am aware," she murmured, "that you harbor no special connection to the village of your birth."

Sasori's eyes fell to the shadows of the other side of the room, and the woman followed his gaze.

Shizune was down on her knees scrubbing out the sluices, her white coat slathered generously with blood and a streak of it splattered across her cheek and stiffening a lock of otherwise soft black hair. Melting into the shadows, she had been listening intently the whole time, body stiffened and ready in case this newcomer in her black and red coarse linen proved a threat; ever vigilant, Sasori noted wryly.

Now, the woman with her orange-painted nails turned Sasori aside, the piercing on her lip glittering like a little star in the dim, almost blue light. "You can not take her with you." Her voice seemed almost sad, eyes dull, and was plainly not without sympathy. "She must say."

Red eyes narrowed in the dangerous way no one had seen in so long. The old life started to fill Sasori again. "Either she comes," he whispered in an especially soft voice, "or I stay. And if I stay, you don't leave this room alive." There had always been traps placed around the room in order to protect his investment; Sasori suspected he was about to see if they would do their job the way they were supposed to.

The woman from Ame registered no shock, no surprise, no anything on her face at this blatant threat of death. Instead, her face remained a porcelain mask as flawless as Tsunade's. Dark eyelashes—done with some makeup other than kohl, since the eyeliner seemed to be melting too, like icing on a cake left in the sun—narrowed over pale eyes. "Why?"

Sasori's answer was immediate. "Because while I trust Shizune to keep her mouth shut if I were to leave her—no matter how betrayed she felt—, I also happen to know what extents the Interrogation Squad of this village are willing to go to in order to get information out of their captives." As resilient as Shizune was, she'd barely be human anymore after they would be finished with her.

Her answer was an eternity in coming. The narrowed, shrewd gaze that came over her face suggested that she suspected Sasori to have an ulterior motive—though she was intelligent enough not to press the issue.

Finally, she nodded.

"Alright."

And the dim lights flickered overhead, as Shizune scrubbed out the sluices for the last time.

* * *

As with all of my other doorstoppers, this got way out of hand as far as length goes. Please let me know what you thought.


End file.
